Yup! We live in a basement and have this deal with the spiders that they’ll be left alone as long as they stay off the furniture. For some reason we basically only see them in the bathroom but the occasional time they’ve been bad, they get exiled to the laundry room.Usually there are 3-5 out that we can see at any given time. Most are very tiny ones that chill in webs, but a few are hunters that are much more mobile. Those that stick around or do something notable get named after a while. Other than Hex there’s been …

Peeping Tom who lived in a web in front of the toilet and just watched you. Sometimes, usually after someone showered and there was condensation in the room, he’d take a little jaunt around his “porch”. He disappeared one day under mysterious circumstances. While hoping for his safe return I took the opportunity to clean around his home and accidentally sucked it up with a hand vacuum.

Marina, who was originally named Mario as I rescued her from the sink - the name was changed when I suspected her to be a girl due to her looking like a bigger version of a species we sometimes see. She was my fave as she was always up to something and was very active. We think she was huffing caulking as after we redid it she loved to sit on the new caulk, leading us to childishly say she was “addicted to caulk.” We were genuinely concerned about her addiction though as it seemed unhealthy. I once saw her awkwardly chase down a pill millipede. You wouldn’t think it possible for something a few mm across to look embarrassed, but I swear she did after she bit it in the ass and it ran off unphased. I think she was too tiny to pierce its exoskeleton. She’s recently disappeared and I’m legit sad and hoping she’s just off on one of her adventures.

I then recycled the name Mario for one who I had to quickly scoop out of the sink when I was running the water and hadn’t noticed because he was so tiny. I was proud of myself as, despite what you may think I’m slightly arachnophobic. (I was very arachnophobic before we started keeping them as free-range pets / housemates.)

Big Bertha, who lived in parts unknown but would often show up in the bathroom at night. She had a habit of temporarily stealing the webs of the resident spiders for a few hours before departing. Usually the other spider would fuck off and watch from a distance, but once I saw her in there just staring down the owner. To my knowledge, she never hurt them though.

It’s possible that Hex is actually Big Bertha, as he/she/it (I’m sure I’m misgendering the hell out of them all) has a similar personality.

Can you possibly tell that we cannot currently get pets due to our living situation? We’re making do with what the basement provides for companionship.

You’ll get spiders in your coochie!